Memories

They are funny old things. I often worry about just how much the brain retains, largely without my knowledge let alone blessing. Old phone numbers for houses we moved from when I was 7. Birthdays for almost anyone I don't like. Song lyrics - dear lord - the song lyrics. As soon as you hear the opening bar, that's it, your brain produces all of the lyrics that 5 seconds earlier you would have sworn you didn't know.

However annoying or inefficient our brains may seem at retaining rubbish and forgetting the important neural Post-Its, just occassionally it digs up a gem. Like yesterday. I was out in the car and I was hungry. Decided to get a McDriveThru on my way home and, having wrongly recalled the location of one McShits', I found myself almost home, parked in the 'local' with the radio on. With trepidation I had plumped for the Radio 1 Chart Show (a risky selection for a 30-something these days but it treated me relatively kindly).

So there I was. Intrigued to hear that James Blunt was back in the charts - who knew? - and unsurprised by the volume of well-known, well-trodden paths through Memory Lane my brain was trying to direct me towards. I wasn't in the mood. There was a guy, a break-up, tears, and James Blunt's first album on repeat for many months of 2005...(and 2006, to be honest). But then two worlds - or at least cranial continents - collided. The combination of already having connected to 'that' chapter of my past, fused with the taste of my Big Tasty (or McNasty as one of my friend's calls it.) You see, I thought to myself just how delicious (not a word I EVER usually associate with burgers of said calibre) the Big Tasty sauce is. And it is. Creamy, the colour of thousand island, the taste of, erm, Big Tasty sauce.

Suddenly, there he was. I was sat in my car back in 2005 with the James Blunt guy. Outside McDonald's in Tonypandy (yes, non-Welshies, that's a real place. You're thinking of Pontypandy where Fireman Sam lives). And I was being told I simply had to lose my virginity - I had to try my first ever Big Tasty and discover the wonder that is the sauce.

From then until now, I have never recalled that tiny and insignificant fact - he was responsible for me trying that burger, way back when. Regardless of how many I've had since (almost none, obviously, as my body is a temple). Regardless of the number of conversations I've had with my boyfriend about how incredible I find his choice to always have his burgers plain - even the Big Tasty! Can you imagine choosing NOT to have the only yummy part of the whole menu?!

Nope. My brain chose that moment, 9 years later, when I was alone, in my car, listening to James Blunt and eating a burger to poke at me with a 'new' memory stick, probably to see if it could make me cry. I, thus, conclude that our memory has a mind of its own (ironically?) and behaves like a bigger boy in the playground, just waiting for the perfect moment to pull a girl's pigtails and make her cry.

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I would like to point out that a) I didn't cry but was more 'well bugger me' about the whole thing and b), this post was in no way endorsed by McD's or any of their affiliates in the sauce-making arena (although I am open to free Big Tasty sauce for life as some kind of sponsorship deal).

So this is Christmas...

So this is Christmas
And what have we done?
Another year over
A new one just begun

Five years ago I was facing my first Christmas Eve & Christmas morning without my little girl. It was her dad's turn to have her. As a fully fledged member of Adulthood, there was no real problem with this although I wasn't relishing the thought of spending the beginning of the yuletide festivities at home with my cats - that was a life statement I was ready to make!

And there he was. My knight in shining armour. He suggested he stay over on Christmas Eve and head off to his mum's Christmas dinner the next day. I hadn't asked him to. I hadn't even dropped subtle hints, ready to get annoyed at him if he didn't pick up on them. We'd only been seeing each other a matter of weeks (about 6 by my calculation) so I was still trying to dish out the 'crazy' in very small portions, if at all!

Fast-forward a few years and he stepped up in a far more important way. Despite having done it before, it would seem that giving birth for a second time - to our enormous son - was a task for which I was ill-equipped. And without him right by my side I would still be there now trying to deliver an 18 month old!

But that little gesture five years ago - that act of kindness - is what he is all about. He hides it well under the façade of being a grumpy bugger most of the time. Bah Humbug and all that. But when something matters, large or small, he knows.

Merry Christmas, I love you.

Klose Enkounters of the KiKiKind

"K has a doctor's appointment so she'll be in a little later this morning. Once she's here she'll show you the ropes."

And so I sat my 20 year-old butt down and waited...That was both the bane and bliss of temping - not too much expected of you but often frustrating when you can't seem to find anything to pass the time because you're 'just a temp'.

Eventually K arrived. Smart, organised, younger than I'd thought she'd be. We danced the usual jig of getting to know each other whilst at the same time working through the basics – phone system, toilets, tea-making facilities, what the point of our office was...

It turned out she was also 20 (although she had a grown-up job and wasn't a student on summer holidays) but then she mentioned her husband and daughter! How could she have a husband (teehee!) Sounded far too grown-up! There was no chance we'd have anything in common then - apart from our age, we were lifetime's apart! I'd not long returned from a year abroad as part of my language degree (more of this another time) so was full of the joys of la liberté and she was settled down (and, yes, a proper grown-up - all I could keep thinking!)

I couldn't tell you now what it was that clicked but there we were no more than an hour in each other's company, working for a seemingly very strict council GM (who was no doubt working on something important in the adjacent office) and across the hall from a grump of an accounts clerk when something must have just clicked.

All I can liken it to is 'love at first sight' (without the sex).

We were in stitches - the type of genuine uncontrollable laughter that is both agonising and ecstatic all at once. I wonder, if we really thought long and hard about it, whether either of us could remember what lead us so quickly to falling for each other the way we did (still in an utterly asexual way, you understand).

Fast-forward 15 years and she's still my soulmate - always there, usually doing something juvenile that only I would find hilarious (we are truly hilarious).

How do we end up with people in our lives - in whichever capacity - who just seem to fit? Divine intervention? Fate? Serendipity?

Reckon if K and I pondered this over a few Raspberripolitans we could come up with the answers...might forget the question though.

An EPIC Party, summer 2008 (c) Sarah Grimwood 2013

Distance

I wonder whether we are supposed to think of distance in the same way as we consider age - just a number. If we are, then the number is a mere 5355 miles. Nothing really. Except it is so much more than a number.
It's really not just the inconvenience. Well, having said that, I could have done with him being here when I came home to no electricity. When I realised there were far too many lightbulbs that need replacing. When I noticed the over-flowing bins. When I couldn't be bothered sorting the dirty washing. When I felt chilly curled up on the sofa.
It isn't even the fact that I'm on my own. I quite enjoy my own company (if I do say so myself). I can manage to concoct my own dinner. Do the shopping. Watch some TV. Scout for films. Chat to friends & family. Avoid housework (at all costs).

I miss him.

Not in a pathetic way. He's my buddy. My bear. My true love. And today is only Day One. From tomorrow he moves even further away - 11412 miles! And there are 13 more days to go...